Why Shop at Main Street Books?

Main Street Books is a locally owned independent bookstore that has been serving the St. Charles area since 1993. We are one of the only independent bookstores in the whole of St. Charles County.

We’d really like to stay here- Main Street is nice, we can walk down to the Missouri River on pretty days and we’re right across the street from a really yummy ice cream parlor.

A more important reason, though, is that shopping at an independent store benefits the community.

Take a look at this list of reasons to support your local independently-owned businesses from www.indiebound.org :

When you shop at an independently-owned business, your entire community benefits:

Spend $100 at a local and $68 of that stays in your community. Spend the same $100 at a national chain, and your community only sees $43.

Local businesses create higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.

More of your taxes are reinvested in your community–where they belong.

Buying local means less packaging, less transportation, and a smaller carbon footprint.

Shopping in a local business district means less infrastructure, less maintenance, and more money to beautify your community.

Local retailers are your friends and neighbors—support them and they’ll support you.

Local businesses donate to charities at more than twice the rate of national chains.

More independents means more choice, more diversity, and a truly unique community.

People still want books- actual, honest-to-goodness, paper bound books, to hold and open and smell and hug and fall asleep with at night and go on long trips with and share with friends and have signed by authors and spill coffee on and put on a shelf and stare at and visit again in three years when you just can’t stand not being part of that book’s universe for another second. Our job at Main Street Books is to supply you with these life-long partners. We also bring you the creators of these worlds and characters, the authors who pour so much of themselves into these books, who want more than anything to know that their work is being appreciated by people who love books. We are a space for people to meet and talk about books. We are a space for teenagers to come hide away and discover new stories. We are a space for children to laugh at the silly ladies reading silly books to them. We are tangible. We are solid.

We are not a place in cyberspace that runs your selection through an algorithm to tell you what to read next. We are people- actual honest-to-goodness, real live human beings who love books with all of our hearts and souls, who value your opinion as a reader and are happy to share our love of books with you.

This is our purpose.

You, the consumer, the shopper, the reader, have the power to actualize that purpose. If what we do matters to you, shop with us. If reading books is valuable to you, you belong with us.